Blog Tour: Cora Carmack and All Played Out – Review, Excerpt and Giveaway!

Hello everyone! I am SO excited to be a part of this blog tour. I adore this series, approved I adore Cora and I want you ALL to fall in love with this series and Cora and all the beautiful fictional boys she has created for us.

There is SO much awesome with this, so I want to make sure I cover it all. We’re going to meet Cora, learn about the book (with an excerpt), have a spoiler free review courtesy of moi and then GIVEAWAY! That’s the best part right? I thought so too. Let’s jump into this!

Meet Cora Carmack!

Cora Carmack is a twenty-something writer who likes to write about twenty-something characters. She’s done a multitude of things in her life– boring jobs (like working retail), Fun jobs (like working in a theatre), stressful jobs (like teaching), and dream jobs (like writing). She enjoys placing her characters in the most awkward situations possible, and then trying to help them get a boyfriend out of it. Awkward people need love, too. Her first book, LOSING IT, was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller.

Don’t forget to read books 1 and 2: All Lined Up and All Broke Down!

And check out the fourth book in the series, All Closed Off, on GoodReads now!

The Excerpt

The door opens, and my stomach dips at the sight of Nell’s bleary eyes and rumpled hair. She squints at me, and then winces at the sunlight, instinctively taking a step back into the house.

I step in after her without waiting for an invitation, and shut the door firmly behind me.

“I brought coffee,” I say, lifting the tray up into her line of sight.

“Shhh!” She holds one hand up to me and the other to her forehead.

“I think,” she says, her voice raspy, “there’s a herd of elephants in my head.”

“Welcome to the world of hangovers, sweetheart.”

She blinks at me, then says matter-of-factly, “I’m going back to bed.”

She shuffles down the hallway, and I follow her, still holding the coffee carrier and resisting the urge to laugh. Then she swings her bedroom door wide, and doesn’t bother to close it before tumbling headlong into her bed. Again, I take that as permission, closing the door in case Dylan comes home unexpectedly.

Before Nell can slip back into sleep, I force the coffee into her hand.

“Drink a little of this,” I tell her. “It’ll help clear up the headache and nausea.” She doesn’t look like she believes me, but she takes a sip anyway. “Aspirin will help, too, if you have some.”

“Bathroom,” she says, and I go out to the hallway bathroom. I find a bottle in the second cabinet I open.

When I return to her room, she asks, “You find it?”

“I did. Right next to your box of tampons. The things I endure for you, woman.” She rolls her eyes and takes the aspirin, and she drinks about half the coffee before placing the cup on the nightstand and sinking back against her pillows. She must be feeling better because she finally asks the question I’d expected to hear the second she opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

I shrug, toe off my sneakers, and throw myself down on the covers on the other side of her bed. She groans when the mattress bounces, but other than that doesn’t complain.

“I knew you’d be miserable this morning …”

“And you decided that was something you needed to see?”

“I decided I could be of some help. I’ve had more than my fair share of hangovers. When that coffee kicks in all the way, we’ll get you showered and dressed, and then we’ll go out for some greasy breakfast. You’ll be good as new in no time.”

“You’ve done this more than once? Are you crazy? I never want to drink again.”

“Everybody says that. If you don’t, you’re not doing it right.”

“I don’t feel like I did anything right.”

“You checked another thing off your list, didn’t you?”

She throws an arm over her eyes in lieu of an answer, and after a minute or so of silence, she asks, “Why are you really here?”

“I told you, I—”

“If you feel sorry for me because of what happened last night or what I said, don’t. Please. I’d really rather you just leave.”

“I can’t do that. Sorry.”

“Why?”

“Because last time I let you get away from me, you called some giant ginger-bearded monster to get you drunk, and look how well that turned out. Face it. You need me.”

She makes a groan that sounds vaguely laughlike. “Matt is not a monster.”

“We’ll agree to disagree.”

She sighs, and rolls on her side to face me. I suck in a breath because even hungover, she’s beautiful. And that fiery, challenging look in her eyes always goes straight to my cock.

“And if I had wanted to call you?” she asks. “I don’t have your number.”

“You could have just thought of me. I would have known and come running. I’m practically a superhero in that regard.”

“Riiight.”

“Why so disbelieving? Unless you thought of me, and it didn’t work? Were you thinking of me last night, girl genius?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“I thought about you. Even during the game last night when I should have been concentrating on not getting my ass kicked, you kept popping up. I think I might be addicted to you, Antonella De Luca.”

“How do you know my full name?”

“I might have done a little snooping last night while you were out of it. So you were valedictorian in high school, huh?”

“Just how much snooping did you do?”

“Relax. Your list is safe. I promised I wouldn’t read it, and I didn’t.” My eyes drop to her lips, which she keeps pressing together in what I assume is nervousness. “It was tempting, though.”

All of her is tempting, and I should probably get out of this bed right now before I drag her beneath me and remind myself just what her skin tastes like.

Regretfully, I pull myself up to a sitting position and say, “All right, sweetheart. Go shower so we can get breakfast. Unless you need assistance, then I’d be happy to—”

She stands up and faces me, still all cute and rumpled from sleep. “You are so …” She trails off, and shakes her head, turning for the door instead.

As she heads for the bathroom, I call out, “I’m so what? Charming? Devastatingly handsome?”

“You so better be in the living room by the time I’m done with my shower.”

Damn. I’d been looking forward to seeing her in a towel.

Next time.

The Review:

Please be aware while there will be no spoilers for this novel in the review, I can’t guarantee there will not be spoilers for All Lined Up and All Broke Down. Please click those titles to read the reviews!

I was so excited to get an advanced copy of this. I read the first two and loved the first two. I think Carson will always be the love of my life. Always. Sigh. But yes, I was very excited to get an early copy and to be a part of this awesome blog tour. Falling in love with two new characters, in a universe you already know you love…its the best. It really is.

First off, I gotta say. I love both characters. I love the diversity of both of them, I love the determination of both of them, and the ambition of both of them. They’re so different, and you’re really thinking, come on, how do these two even end up in the same universe but they do. Because while Nell and Torres might not have a massive amount of things in common, they have chemistry and they’re both determined on their own path for different reasons. They both put an insane amount of pressure on themselves and honestly, they need to let up. And that’s where the other person comes in.

Torres teaches Nell to have fun, let loose and Nell teaches Torres not to hide behind all his fun. They really work so well together and I’m rooting for them from the beginning. What I love is that they’re both so blunt, so they kind of square off so many times. Torres is completely blunt about what he wants and when he wants it and Nell is just…she doesn’t hold back. She says the first thing that’s on her mind and more than one time, I burst out laughing because of what she said and how it just totally works. I can see why someone would fall in love with that; its insanely refreshing.

I also love the way they’re brought together, this idea that Nell has spent her entire life focused on being the good girl, getting the grades, going to college and all of that. She really realizes, I haven’t had any experiences and so she starts to make a list of things to do, a sort of college bucket list. And the list is fabulous and when Torres discovers it, it just is even better because he’s determined to help her check off every single one. The adventures they have in doing that together and how it brings them together: that’s what makes this book so damn good. It starts off as a legitimate friendship, with its ups and downs, but it takes its time and then hits the two of them like a cannon blast and as a reader, it was awesome.

Lastly, Cora just writes GREAT romance. She makes it so real and so damn sexy (seriously, keep cool water close by at all times when reading this book) but she doesn’t shove it in your face so much that you’re like, okay, we get it, they’re in love and they have sex, I’m bored. She creates a story, a character story, and you care about them more than just a couple and that’s what makes her romances SO good. You want them to fall in love and you want all their problems to go away and you want everything to work out. And you want more and more steamy scenes for sure though because holy moly, Cora knows how to write them!

All I gotta say is this: another winner in this series for Cora. Sports, hot boys and badass heroines and now she’s announced she has a fourth one on the way, sometime next year. Cora, you have me sold. I’m hooked!

The Giveaway!

A signed Rusk University Set for one lucky winner! Follow THIS link to enter now!

Follow the Rest of the Blog Tour :)

You can see all the lovely awesome blogs that are participating on this tour, and see what they have to say about it by clicking this link. I’m in pretty good company!

Hello! My name is Sara. I am 32 years old, Mexican-Irish, short, liberal, tattooed, loud, proudly bisexual, and a total cat lady. I love reading, writing, eating cupcakes, watching baseball, listening to music, binging all the good TV stuff and running. I live in Southern California physically but my mind is always in a fictional place. My debut novel, The Awakened, was released in December of 2015, and was my first successful NaNoWriMo novel. The sequel, The Sanctuary was published January 2017. I am currently working on a young adult fantasy called Legacy. Welcome to my blog!

**The above picture was taken in February of 2020 in Forks, Washington, the town in which Twilight takes place.**